Three members of the DeKalb Interfaith Network for Peace and Justice attended the School of the Americas Vigil outside the gates of Ft. Benning, GA. November 17th and 18th. Over 20,000 attended what has become the largest annual gathering for peace and human rights. The Georgia vigil started with three individuals, one being Catholic Priest Father Bourgeois, in 1990. This year Rep. Dennis Kucinich was also present along with Rep. McKinney, and Rep. McGovern the sponsor of legislation to cut off funding for the school.

For decades the training school at Ft. Benning was called the School of the Americas (SOA), it is now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). The school has graduated hundreds of military officers who have lead or participated in nearly every human rights atrocity in the hemisphere. Organizations across the world have called on the U.S government for its closure since discovering copies of torture manuals used at the school. In June 2007, 203 members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted to close the school, six votes shy of the margin needed.

Adriana Portillo-Bartow, of Chicago, told of how her father, stepmother, sister, sister-in-law and her two daughters were “disappeared” in Guatemala in a war directed and carried out by graduates of the school. A school funded with U.S. tax dollars.

All silently participated in the solemn funeral procession, raising white crosses and saying presente as the names of victims were sang aloud. Then the crosses with names of those killed by the graduates of the school were left in the chain link fence at the gate.

If the U.S. government doesn’t close down the school it appears that the Latin American countries will themselves. Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and Venezuela have announced they are withdrawing their militaries from the school.

Recently Colombia arrested five high-ranking military officers who received training at the school and two additional officers who were instructors at WHINSEC. All are charged with providing security and troops for the major drug cartel in Colombia.

The three from DeKalb, Maylan Dunn-Kenney, Dan Kenney, and Chuck Hammett, also had a table with information about noprivatearmies.org/Clearwater an organization formed in January to bring attention to and stop the expansion of Blackwater USA’s new training facility opened this past April in Jo Daviess County, 7 miles north of Mt. Carroll, IL. They were joined by Fred Turk of the Sauk Valley Citizens for peace and Justice. Mr. Kenney also gave a presentation at the Conference Center Saturday evening about Blackwater and the groups efforts, that was attended by over 100.

Each year the protest grows and each year a few more vote to end the funding of the school. A day will come when School of the Americas will no longer be a blood stained spot of shame on our country’s current policies but will take its place among other U.S. sanctioned atrocities in our history. May we pray that this day will come this year for the sake of all our neighbors of in Latin America. For more information see www.soaw.org.

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Updated on 4-27-08